Is this a scam?

If you did happen to click on the link, it may have installed something on your computer, claiming to be a virus scanner. This may, in fact, be real malware.

I would recommend scanning your system with a reliable tool like Malwarebytes. Let it scan everything and clean up any damage it may discover.

Thank you David. All is legit except I was being a bit sarcastic on the last part lol.

I never click on anything. I’ve had a bunch of those scams pop up over the years and always avoid them because I well know what they are about. The obvious thing for me is I have never had McAfee on any of my computers, so that was a nonstarter. I see this in league with the guy who calls me with a very strong Russian accent to tell me he is from technical support and they have discovered my Windows computer has a serious problem. . . which would be really cool if I actually had a Windows system!

I have scanned my system with Intego and Malwarebytes after each instance. I also restarted the computer. My frustration is it locks up Safari and also prevents me from doing something very important in my life. I’ve tried the Safari Force Quit, Option key relaunch and have always had Safari set to not re-open windows on relaunch. Now today I was able to successfully go through the obituaries without it appearing again so maybe the folks who administer the obituaries have found the problem. Oh, and I too am running Catalina on my iMac but it also happened with my ancient MBP running High Sierra.

Very much appreciate your comments. Thank you.

I strongly recommend a good ad-blocker for stuff like this.

I use Adblock Plus on Firefox (home page. Firefox add-on page).

I have it configured with 8 filter lists (in alphabetical order):

  • ABP Filters. Anti-circumvention filters designed to block scripts that attempt to bypass ad blockers. (Can we say “whack-a-mole” here?)
  • Adblock Warning Removal List (part of the EasyList suite). Removes messages and warnings that complain about your use of an ad blocker.
  • CPBL fiters. Blocks malicious, deceptive and spyware content.
  • EasyList. The core ad-blocking list.
  • EasyPrivacy. A supplement to EasyList that removes trackers and other threats to privacy.
  • Fanboy’s Annoyance List. Blocks annoying social media content. It includes the contents of EasyList Cookie List (blocks cookie-banners, GDPR notices and other related content), and Fanboy’s Social Blocking list (blocking embedded content from social media sites like Facebook, including share-to buttons).
  • NoCoin. Blocks browser-based crypto-mining scripts and sites.
  • Spam404. Blocking scams and other abusive content.

Agreed. I use uBlock Origin, but it uses some of the same filter lists. It makes browsing the web actually pleasurable. The hard ads to block are the ads that are mixed into the content, like the ads on YouTube or on some newspaper sites where the ad links are embedded into the photographs. Turning on the ad blocker also blocks the photos that accompany the article. You get the text but not the photos.

I’ve found that the APB lists I’m using successfully block YouTube ads. But I whitelist that site because those ads aren’t abusive and I do want to support the channels I watch.

As for ad-blocking blocking newspaper content, yes, I see this on some sites. I’ll whitelist some sites in order to get the content. Other sites, that don’t matter as much to me, will remain with their ads blocked.

I usually configure ABP to allow acceptable ads, which are those that meet certain criteria (considered to be not annoying or abusive). I don’t object to ads per-se, but only to those that ruin my browsing experience.

If there is one specific ad source you want to allow (e.g. your newspaper’s photo server), you should be able to identify the rule that is blocking it and manually disable that rule alone. It can take some time to determine the right rule, but with ABP (don’t know about uBO), they create a tab in Firefox’s Inspector console, where I can see all the rules that were applied and quickly enable/disable individual ones.

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Some browsers these days will popup a new dialog box any time that clicking a link keys a download, asking permission to proceed with the download and give you the opportunity to designate the download location. Older browsers will simply give you a visual indication of a download progress and a means of locating the location.

Holding the shift key down when you launch your browser should prevent any previously opened site from re-opening.

I have seen this phony McAfee alert numerous times in the last week or two on the gocomics.com site. It did not lock up Safari, although it might have seemed like it: If you (or at least, for me) hold the Back button ("<") in the toolbar, you get a drop down of all the previous pages in that page’s immediate history. What I would see is several dozen instances of the fake McAfee page before the actual previous page. So simply hitting the Back button would go back to the same page. Sliding down the list to the legitimate previous page would escape from scam.

I would include a screen shot, but naturally, today gocomics seems to be free of this malware.

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I use Safari. When I see something scammy, here is what I do after I clear it from the window
I select ‘Show All History’ from the menubar. The top few URLs are domains I don’t recognize. I make note of them and delete them from the History. I then go to Preferences->Privacy, click the 'Manage Website Data" button and then search for the suspect domains from the history. When they show up below, I tap the Remove button to remove their cache, local storage, and any cookies produced.

It’s also a signal to check for malware. 2 quick checkers that I use are Malwarebytes and Clean My Mac. I then restart the Mac.

On mobile devices, the ability to clear local data related to a domain is under Settings->Safari->Advanced (at the bottom of the list)->Website Data.

Ya know every day I take time to say thanks to TidBits and this discussion thread is just the reason why. So much good advice and excellent guidance is readily available and I thank you all for your contributions. When I finish reading I almost think I’m smarter lol. All the different talk threads have really enriched my computer experience.

Upgraded my ABP which was installed but was a bit old. Following the other links you all have provided. Thanks. Hope @appleget has found the answer to the original question.

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For your Safari, just install Ka-Block! (MAS link). It’s a completely hands-off solution to intrusive ads and monkey business like you just experienced. It’s free and it’s open source. Especially for people who don’t want a lot of hassle with configuration and setting up blockers and rules and yada yada, this is the tool to just regain some sanity when browsing. If you want to exclude individual sites from its blocking you can do that via right-click on the URL. Other than that it will just do its thing without you ever worrying about it again. Since you get it through the MAS it will let you know when an update as been released. Installing that update is then one click away. :slight_smile:

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For years I used uBlock Origin – but it stopped working with Safari 13. Many folks wondered what would work as well as uBlock Origin. There is a long discussion about options – nicely summarized at the top of the discussion:

https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158

Currently, I use AdGuard for Safari – it works about as well as uBlock Origin did.

Thank you Simon.

Well, I signed on to the death notices section of two newspapers whose web services I subscribe to and low and behold, they have both implemented an additional step where one has to click on one of those stupid pictures and click on pictures showing crosswalks, cars, Mac computers, whatever, before one can access the listings. Makes me think the problem was across the board as I believe the obituary listings are a separate service for the papers.

BTW why do those picture tests always include shots so dark those of us with vision difficulties can hardly see them? Gotta get kids out of programing :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Because they are not only used to prove you’re human. As a matter of fact, that’s probably one of the least important reasons (at least to the reCaptcha people at Google).

Sure, it’s marketed to web-site owners as a way block to bots, spam and other forms of abuse, but it is also used to train Google’s AI models. When you see a bit of scanned text from a book, you’re helping an OCR model. When you see a photo of a street scene and are told to identify objects like traffic lights, cross-walks or people, you are helping train an autonomous driving model.

As the AI models get better, the images needed to help it improve are going to be those that are harder and harder to identify, because the models have no problem with the easy images. Eventually, the images they present will be impossible for humans to detect (for some people, they may already be there), at which point the system will become useless.

The amusing irony of it all is that Google sells these AI models. And you can guarantee that the spammers are using those models to bypass Captchas, so they can access otherwise-blocked web sites. In other words, although they are intended to only allow humans access, we’re quickly getting to the point where only bots will be able to pass the test, and all of us humans solving puzzles in order to access web sites are making it possible.

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For many newspapers, they are. For these, an obituary is an editorial written by the newspaper’s staff, and a “death notice” is paid.

IIRC, ancestry.com and legacy.com are big syndicators as well as having their own paid platform. For many newspapers, paid obits are a source of much needed revenue. But there are a lot of questions regarding privacy and security and these services.

In that vein, this is amusing.

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Actually many of the “obits” that appear in the newspapers are submitted by funeral directors and usually there is a fee that is part of the cost of the funeral. There are those that are written by newspaper staff, usually for fairly prominent people. I’ve noticed that the postings are more and more simply a listing of person, family, and info on calling hours and services.

Thank you for the articles. That Ancestry stuff is, talking about scams, something people really need to think twice about, and then think twice more about! This is especially true for people with medical conditions that may impact their insurability. Why would one ever want to hand over all the data included in those test results? For me that is a very big DUH??? lol

That is beautiful!!! I’m still laughing!!